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Home › Articles › Birthday Time › Reflections on Motherhood

Reflections on Motherhood

A One-Year Birthday and a Baby on the Way

By Kate Riener Boyd

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The first time I was pregnant a year and nine months ago, one positive home pregnancy test was reason enough to declare my joyous news to the world. Last week I took three positive home pregnancy tests and I'm still not sure what to believe.

It's strange to be where I am, so much sooner than I thought I'd be. Roughly a month ago, my husband, John, asserted his readiness to get pregnant again. For about a minute and a half, I agreed and calculated that is was probably a time of the month that I wouldn't become pregnant anyway. Bad math – in hindsight I can see that it was ripe ovulation time.

I have a jumble of emotions this time, not to mention the requisite torrent of hormones, making it hard to celebrate as fervently as I did with my first pregnancy. The truth is that after that minute and a half when we were gung-ho to procreate again, we quickly determined that it was too soon. Our son was just turning 1, hadn't mastered walking and was just enough to handle.

We also have a scheduling concern, as we did with the first one, since my husband's work is crazy and travel heavy for the first eight months of the year. An autumn birth allows us plenty of time at home together and ensures that John won't be leaving town on any extended stays, leaving me alone with a newborn. Getting pregnant before the end of the year meant my due date would fall in the summer when John's calendar could easily call for some travel. Gulp.

So I'm pregnant. Although my breasts have yet to swell and tenderize, nausea calls for a lot more eating than I have been doing solely while my son naps. I get quite fatigued, and my emotional roller coaster is riding the rails 24 hours a day.

Waking in the middle of the night is a pregnancy hallmark for me – I did it throughout my first – and it's beginning again. Most times it's to empty my bladder, but that's often followed by lying awake obsessing about some tiny aspect of my life from how to reorganize the kitchen pantry to where to put the new baby, from a friendship lost a dozen years ago to current trouble with a "used-to-be-close-friends" family member. I am often awake for more than an hour each night, sometimes more than once, frittering away the precious sleep I desperately need to keep up with the 1-year-old who has now learned to walk. And it's only going to get worse – just wait until that third trimester heartburn starts. Am I ready for this?


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